Many homeowners are fortunate to own one to five acre tracts of land. In many of these cases, these homeowners will have lawns as large as one to four acres. These large lawns are certainly picturesque and add a quality to a home or homestead that is desirable. But like other things of beauty, a large lawn comes with a price. The time and effort required to cut such lawns can be burdensome.
The homeowner has a number of options. First, these large lawns can be cut with walk-behind mowers, either propelled or unpropelled. In either case, cutting a large lawn with a walk-behind mower is extremely time-consuming. Another option entails the use of a conventional garden tractor. However, again a conventional garden tractor will only cut a swath so wide and therefore the homeowner will find him or herself riding a garden tractor for hours. There are faster ways to cut large lawns. One is to employ a small farm tractor with a large rotary mower that would be attached either under the belly of the tractor or behind the tractor. Of course, there is an expense involved in purchasing a small farm tractor and a sizeable rotary cutter. Further, many homeowners with large lawns do not have outbuildings or garage space to store a small farm tractor.
There have been attempts at designing gang-type lawn mowers that could be pulled by a garden tractor or a small farm tractor. See for example, the disclosures found in the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,771,669; 5,133,174; 5,851,020; 4,926,621; 3,514,126; 4,870,810; and 3,608,284. The disclosure of these patents is expressly incorporated herein by reference. Most of the gang-type mower systems disclosed in these patents utilizes a series of lawn mowers coupled together where each lawn mower includes its own power source. This makes the entire system expensive and impractical.
Therefore, there has been and continues to be a need for an economical and practical gang-type lawn mower system that can be pulled by a conventional garden tractor or small farm tractor.